A federal magistrate judge has denied a request by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) to reconsider sanctions against him.
U.S. Judge James P. O’Hara fined Kobach $1,000 in June for making “patently misleading representations” to the court regarding the contents of documents he was photographed holding when he met with Donald Trump last year. The American Civil Liberties Union requested those documents as part of an ongoing lawsuit, but Kobach said they were not relevant and did not turn over all of them until the court compelled him to do so.
Kobach last week appealed O’Hara’s ruling, saying he was pressed for time and therefore cut pages at the last minute that contained information crucial to the ACLU’s lawsuit.
In a Wednesday ruling, O’Hara denied Kobach’s request for a motion for reconsideration because he was introducing new arguments he hadn’t used before.
“Significantly, defendant never represented, as he does now, that his misstatements were the result of editing errors. The court declines to grant reconsideration based on this explanation ‘that could have been raised in prior briefing.’ In any event, this new excuse lacks credibility based on its late assertion (which appears to be an attempt at a second bite at the apple) and lack of supporting documentation,” O’Hara wrote.
Kobach is the vice chair of a commission that Trump convened to investigate elections. He is also running for governor of Kansas.
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